"The Crucible" and the Red Scare

In the play The Crucible there is a big controversy over witchcraft. Some children were dancing in the woods with the slave and the Rev. caught them. So that they wouldn't get in trouble they lied to him saying it was witchcraft and that the slave girl made them do it. Then they start blaming people saying that they had seen them with the Devil. When they had not. Well the town went crazy thinking there were witches in there town. So when a person was asked if they were a witch and they said no then the townspeople said they were lying and would hang them. But if they had said they were and had repented' and blamed someone else of being a witch they were free to go. But the story wasn't only about trying to save there lives if someone wanted land or another persons wife/husband then they would say that that person was a witch so they would get hanged and the person who wanted the land or spouse could have them without stealing or committing a crime.

This play was written in a time period when there was a similar controversial era. It was called the McCarthy era. Of course they weren't calling people witches or anything but they were calling them communists. Well I will tell you a little background on the subject. In 1949, when the Soviets made their first atomic bomb and when Chinese communism had hit its greatest, fear was everywhere in the United States. In 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy said that communism had crossed over to America and there were spy's letting out secret American information. McCarthy accused the Truman administration of ignoring these people and not finding them and kicking them out of the country. As the thought of communism grew McCarthy kept feeding it with his ideas. Saying he had over 200 names of people who were connected to the communist party. When asked for the list he could never show any evidence. But people were being accused of being a communist. And in that day communist were highly prosecuted and names were put in a...

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...stripped of your civil liberties." If you lived in America during the period that has come to be known as the "redscare", then you were constantly in danger of hearing fatal words such as these that could completely destroy your life. Arthur Miller wrote a story about this dreadful time, titled The Crucible. Since the subject was controversial at the time, Miller had to subliminally write about it through the story of the Salem witch trials. Basic human rights were violated by HUAC, who was symbolized by the court system in Miller's story. To anyone who didn't confess to their supposed crime, there were severe repercussions, such as death or blacklisting. Senator McCarthy, a corrupt senator who rose to power in the American legal system, was signified by Abigail Williams, a local teenager.
HUAC, which stands for the House of Un-American Activities Committee, was solely possessed with the notion of putting away supposed communists and keeping them from corrupting the good, legal standing citizens. Human rights, however, was never considered in their verdicts. In The Crucible, the local court system had no way of judging who was innocent or guilty other than the testimony of the "victim." As an effect of this unintentional bias, the accused were never acquitted, but were given the opportunity to confess to the crime of witchcraft to lessen their sentence. With the redscare, the accused...

...throughout his early education, but nonetheless earned a degree in English from the University of Michigan in 1938. He married Marilyn Monroe in 1956, around the time that he was known as “the man who had all the luck”, but the two divorced soon after, in 1961. During his time as a student, he won multiple awards in play writing, along with noted playwright Tennessee Williams.
After writing multiple plays, including Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, and The Man Who Had All the Luck, Miller wrote The Crucible, which opened on Broadway January 22, 1953. The year before the play opened, April 1952, he went from Washington to Salem, to do research in the Salem, Massachusetts archives, for the sake of historical accuracy. On his way, he visited his friend Elia Kazin, who had recently become a target for the political attacks on Hollywood that had been taking place in the government.
The political advances of the time were not merely on members of Hollywood. With the onset of the RedScare in Washington, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin first targeted several members of the Army and the State Department as Communist sympathizers. At the time, there was a “deepening national anxiety about the spread of world communism” (“Have you no sense of decency?). Senator McCarthy was placed at the head of the House Un-American Activities Committee, the objective of which was to uncover all communist sympathizers of the time. The committee...

...The RedScare and “The Crucible”
At the time when “The Crucible” was written, the United States and Russia were going through the RedScare which was a major influence when Miller was writing this play. Miller’s tactic in writing this play was to remind people of how the hysteria of the witch hunts could be dangerously similar to the communist hunts going on in the United States at the time. Using the history from the Salem Witch Trials, he wrote a story that was sure to educate people about the potential disaster that could come from the carelessness of accusing others.
“The Crucible” and The RedScare had many similarities due to the fact that the author of “The Crucible” wrote the play to compare the Salem Witch Trials to the RedScare. The first and most distinct similarity is the carelessness and revenge illustrated by accusing others. Miller made sure to point this out to his audience by having a character suggest that someone accused another person solely to get their land (Miller ). Also, when people were accused for either being a witch or a communist, they were arrested with no substantial evidence. For example, when presented with concrete evidence in “The Crucible,” Governor Danforth ignored the evidence and proceeded with the hangings instead of admitting he was wrong...

...The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, was an indirect comparison between the Salem Witchcraft Trials, and the Communist RedScare. Though not directly stated in his story, the events of the 1680s and 1690s witchery accusations were very similar to those of the 1920s RedScare, communists accusations. There was a widespread hysteria in the late sixteenth century of witchcraft in New England. "In Salem Massachusetts, adolescent girls began to show strange behavior and accusations of witchcraft against several west Indian servants steeped in Voodoo Lore" (page 87, American History) The RedScare was a nationwide fear of communists, socialists, and anarchists that grabbed the attention of Americans in 1919 following a series of anarchist bombings (law2.umkc.edu).
Communism is "a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party (dictionary.com)." Joseph McCarthy, the United States Senate in 1850, accused Dean Acheson, the U.S. Secretary of State, of knowing 205 communists in the State Department. He also stated that he himself knew of 57 communists in the department, and called for an investigation. (apl.org) McCarthyism, the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, especially of pro-Communist activity (dictionary.com), destroyed the lives of many...

...The Fear Factor
The Salem Witch Trials and the 1950's RedScare were both the product of fear, hysteria, suspicion, and false accusations. These black events in American history had countless similarities that led to the persecution of many innocent individuals. In many ways, these events were initiated because of human nature and fear of the unknown. It is a natural instinct of all animals to proceed with caution when presented with something that is different. This reaction is a defense mechanism to protect ones self from potential harm and caused the mass hysteria to spread.
Arthur Miller's The Crucible and the Witch Trials began with a few young children, Abigail Williams, Marry Warren and Mercy Lewis, accusing some of the town's women of dancing and chanting in the woods. This was the basis for all their evidence, a few children's stories. In addition, both the incidences had leaders that fed and fueled the hysteria. During the Witch Trials, one of the main "Hanging Judges" was Danforth. He was a main contributor to the hysteria and fear of witches that swelled throughout the communities. Though Danforth did not directly accuse people of practicing witchcraft, he chose to believe the fits that the children of the jury put on in the court. The Children were believed to be innocent and it was given that their voice was the word of god.
The equivalent of the Witch Trial jury during the RedScare was...

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What were the causes of the ‘RedScare’ from the 1940’s to 1954?
The ‘RedScare’ in the 1940’s, late 1950’s was an event which caused great fear and also uproar in most parts of America. The ‘RedScare’ was mainly a fear of communist takeover within America, this seemed very unlikely before the 1940s but the factors I am going to discuss in this essay will bring some justification to why the fear of communism increased so rapidly and became such an issue in 1950’s America.
One of the major factors which caused the ‘RedScare’ was the fear of internal, domestic communists. Communists within society and political organizations caused great fear as it meant communists held more power than it seems and that communists from within the society could overpower and spread their views. This caused fear within people off everyone around them. People started judging their neighbours, friends and also families. This caused a great lack of stability within American society leading to the acceptance of new ideas and phenomenon’s such as the RedScare.
Another factor which caused the ‘RedScare’ was fear of communist infiltration, more widely known as ‘McCarthyism’. This was the fear of ‘Communist espionage’ of American government and also army. It is known as McCarthyism due to great exaggeration of the issue...

...what would be known as the RedScare (****). The RedScare was the label given to the actions of legislation, the race riots, and the hatred and persecution of "subversives" and conscientious objectors during that period of time. The purpose of this research is to explore the threat that plagued the United States in its’ time of great panic and anxiety, during the “first” RedScare which lasted between 1919 to 1921. This powerful threat turned out to be Communism and it was greatly feared by almost every U.S. citizen. Communism is “system of social and economic organization in which property is owned by the state group, to be shared in common or to be disturbed among members of the community equally or in proportion to their respective needs. In 1919, no more than one-tenth of the adult American population belonged to the newly formed communist movement, and even this small percentage were greatly persecuted.
After the real war ended in 1918, the ideological war, turned against conscientious objectors and other radical minorities such as Wobblies, who were members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and also Socialists. It was thought that the Wobblies and the Socialists were trying to overthrow the United States government. Wobblies, were persecuted against for speaking out against the capitalist system. Most of what they said, was only to attract attention, but it was taken...

...November 26, 12
History
Second RedScare and Its Roots
Nearly seventy years ago the most treacherous war ended. The world’s population saw and felt the power and technology of the newly reformed military forces of that time, it was something that had never been experienced before, thousands of lives could be lost in minutes, “Some 70,000–80,000 people, or some 30% of the population of Hiroshima were killed by the blast and resultant firestorm” thousands of acres could be turned into ashes, “The radius of total destruction was about one mile (1.6 km), with resulting fires across 4.4 square miles (11 km2). (Wikipedia). America had just shown its strength to the rest of the world and had established to be a super power with its military force and technology. America just like most other countries in the world was undergoing many different changes, economically, socially and politically. Even though WWII had ended most countries were still unrest and were scared from one another more than ever before, especially America and Russia. “During World War II, Stalin’s doubts about the sincerity of America” (Cold War), USSR as a communist regime had never trusted the western politics of United States of America and themselves had begun to reinforce their military, develop newer weapon technology including Atomic Bombs and increase the number of their military members. Both sides used...